This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: dietmar_morley Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/topics.software.ftmmac/113.4.1.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Russ, I have done most of my tree building on line as I find the interface much more friendly than in FTM as I think I mentioned. As FTM for mac doesn't have a sync facility I have to perform merges with the online tree. So far I have done this 3 or 4 times to update my FTM tree. Every time I carried out a merge the media for each family individual was re-applied. In other words rather than the merge recognising the pre-existence of, say, a census record it just adds another copy so I now have 3 or 4 copies of the same record attached to the members of the tree that had media attached during the first merge. My grandfather for example, has 3 copies of the 1901 census record, plus 3 copies of his birth record, plus 3 copies of his death record and 3 copies of his marriage record. The same has happened where I have photographs. The issue I have found with the census details not being recognised correctly during the merge occurs where I have a tree member that has a number of census references against their residence details. During the merge activity in the left hand box I get one census record detailed, and the right hand box gets the new census record and I am asked to decide which I want as the preferred option. The left hand one is always the same record. In other words when I try to merge a tree member that has records attached from the 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 census' the merge "wizard" will hold the same census record in the left box for each of the others. It asks me to compare each of the above examples with the 1841 record even though my FTM tree record has all 4 already in it. Most frustrating! Another frustration is in the web search view in FTM. When building or adding to my online tree I dutifully went through each of the suggested hints ignoring or accepting them as required only to find that I have to go through the whole process again in FTM. Frustratingly also, some of the hints that appear in FTM seem to be new or different as well as having the originals present. A further irritation is an apparent inconsistency in place names. Leeds, Yorkshire does not appear in some of the drop down lists for example, but does in others. There are other examples of this. I have basically given up with FTM as all the above make the software unusable. What's the point when the online builder is so flexible! Regards, Dietmar Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.